“They must make sure the art remains in tact.”

This is an error I get more often than I like to contemplate. “Intact” seems to be a concept beyond my students to express, if not to imagine (what a sad world view!). Hence this sentence, which seems to advocate some sort of art censorship, although I know that’s not what the writer meant.

But today I’m just using the Horror as a hook to what I really want to share.

I want to make this post a pointer to a wonderful film that’s nominated for Best Animated Short in this year’s Academy Awards. We ordinary viewers don’t usually get a chance to watch the films in this category—all we have is the brief clip shown during the Oscars—but “The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore” is actually available to view online at vimeo. Beyond the wonderful name of the title character, the film presents a story full of unspoken references (well, the whole film is unspoken) to a lot of iconic storms and books and movies about books, and it’s just beautiful. I just watched it, and I have to say that lovers of words, lovers of literature, lovers especially of the printed word, all are celebrated here and will consider its story well worth the investment of 15 minutes.

The site permits embedding and “sharing,” but I can’t seem to persuade WordPress to let me do either, so all I can do is offer the url: http://vimeo.com/35404908.

UB strike
An archive of the events, documents, and correspondence of the faculty strike at the University of Bridgeport 1990-1992, the longest strike in academic history. If you don’t know this story, you should!

UB strike
An archive of the events, documents, and correspondence of the faculty strike at the University of Bridgeport 1990-1992, the longest strike in academic history. If you don’t know this story, you should!